Plains tribe harnesses the wind

Some tribes try their hands at
renewable energy, but traditional energy sources hold more allure
than ever

ROSEBUD, SOUTH DAKOTA — On the vast,
undulating plains of the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota,
winds averaging 18 miles per hour flatten prairie grasses and turn
winter into a subzero menace. But the near-constant gales do have
their advantages.

“I don’t need a hair dryer
in the morning,” says Darrell Marcus, a tribal council member
for the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. “I just stand there, and the
wind dries my hair.”

Now, the tribe has harnessed
that wind for a more ambitious purpose: power. On May 1, tribal
leaders unveiled a 750-kilowatt wind turbine that will produce
enough juice to power 220 homes. It is the first tribally owned,
large-scale turbine in Indian Country.

“When those
blades went up, our hearts went up with it,” says Robert
Gough, gazing up at the trio of seven-foot long blades slowly
spinning almost 200 feet above him. Gough is secretary for the
Intertribal Council on Utility Policy, a coalition of eight Plains
tribes that works to develop renewable energy on tribal
lands.

The turbine will bring in about $15,000
a year in revenue, says Rob Bordeaux, president of the Rosebud
Sioux Tribe Utility Commission. And that’s just the
beginning: The tribe is planning a 20- to 30-megawatt “wind
ranch” — a whole field full of turbines — due to
come online in about two years.

For decades, tribes have
lived with a cruel irony: While Indian lands hold a treasure chest
of energy resources, many American Indians are living without
power. More than 14 percent of tribal households do not have
electricity, according to the Department of Energy. That’s 10
times the national average.

Projects like the Rosebud wind
farm offer a way out, and promise to empower tribes, just as they
power homes and businesses. The Energy Department estimates that
wind resources on the Northern Plains — called by some the
“Saudi Arabia of Wind” — could supply 75 percent
of the electricity demand in the Lower 48 states. Gough says
reservations alone could produce 200 to 300 gigawatts of wind
energy — enough to power millions of
homes.

A new set of rules

But while some tribes, such as the Rosebud Sioux and
Montana’s Blackfeet Tribe, are investing in wind power,
pressure is on to tap traditional energy sources on
reservations.

Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., has
introduced legislation that would exempt energy projects on Indian
lands from environmental review and public comment, and allow
tribes to regulate development now overseen by the U.S. Department
of Interior. General rules governing energy development would still
have to be approved by the Interior secretary, but individual lease
agreements between tribes and energy companies would not.

As it stands now, under the Indian Mineral Development Act of 1982,
Interior must review the potential environmental impacts of energy
projects, a process that typically takes six months to a year, says
David Lester, executive director for the Denver-based Council of
Energy Resource Tribes, a coalition of energy-producing tribes.
“The deals are often dead by then,” he says.
“Interest rates change, market prices fall — if the
deals don’t move quickly, they die.”

Campbell’s bill would “streamline the process,”
says Paul Moorehead, chief counsel for the Senate Indian Affairs
Committee, chaired by Campbell.

The legislation would also
waive Interior’s trust responsibility to the tribes in energy
dealings. This trust relationship means the federal government must
ensure that tribes get a fair shake when their land is leased for
mining, grazing, logging or drilling. In recent years, Indians have
sued the Interior Department, accusing the agency of mismanaging
billions of dollars it collected from those leases (HCN, 5/12/03:
Missing Indian money: Piles or pennies?).

But some tribal
leaders and environmental groups say there aren’t enough
financial and human resources in Indian Country to ensure that
tribal energy resources are developed in an environmentally
responsible way. They fear that the legislation, dubbed the
“Native American Energy Development and Self-Determination
Act” before being rolled into a larger, catchall Senate
energy bill, would leave tribes vulnerable to exploitation by
energy companies.

Historically, when tribes have tried to
assert their authority over corporations, “they’re
challenged at every turn,” says David Getches, a professor of
natural resource law at the University of Colorado and one of the
founders of the Native American Rights Fund. “When
you’re talking about things like power plants, where there
are millions of dollars involved, you will see some of the most
vigorous challenges ever to tribal sovereignty.”

“I think a better name for this legislation would be the
‘Native American Self-Termination Act’,” says
Robert Shimek, special projects director for the Indigenous
Environmental Network and a member of the Chippewa Tribe.
“The way it’s proposed, it reopens the door for dirty
projects — projects that nobody else wants.”

Shimek is wary of a return to the days when the federal government
endorsed projects like the Black Mesa coal mine on the Navajo
reservation in northeastern Arizona. In the 1960s, the Peabody Coal
Company strip-mined 17,000 acres of tribal lands, and the
still-active operation has been blamed for depleting the aquifer
and drying up the Hopi Tribe’s sacred springs.

“(Tribal lands) were essentially energy colonies for the rest
of the country,” says Lester.

When the Senate
resumes debate on the energy bill this summer, Campbell is expected
to offer an amendment addressing some of critics’ concerns,
including retaining Interior’s trust responsibility and
laying out requirements that tribes would have to follow when
conducting environmental reviews.

No matter where the
chips fall on Capitol Hill, Lester is convinced the dig-and-run
days of the past are over. “You won’t find many tribes
that will allow a company to come in and just have at it,” he
says. “Just because we’re poor doesn’t mean
we’ll sell out.”